The Barnstable Charter Commission is wrestling in mud, letting time and viable ideas slip from its grasp by entertaining a motion at its last meeting to reconsider town meeting as a contender in its deliberations toward a more effective government.

Say, didn’t the voters of this town decide a decade or so ago that town meeting was too cumbersome a method of governance for modern times in a growing citytown with ambitious ideas for growth?

In view of the previous ballot ending town meeting’s very long reign, and the reality that town meeting is to modern government what the dirigible is to the jet fighter, discussing town meeting is misspent time and effort.

It’s understandable that some elderly people fondly recall and miss spending a day or night or two with their neighbors wielding verbal mallets in what is still referred to as the purest form of collective self-governance. But town meeting falls into the same good ol’ days category as the 5-cent cigar or chaw of tabaccy – the ones that also tempted cancer.

Town meeting never was as pure as some like to recall. It was as political as any form of government with its bevy of intimidating speakers, voting blocs, shifty moderators, bombastic blowhards, cagey selectmen, wily lawyers and self-serving union groups who would vote on their wage increases then disappear, leaving the general business that didn’t directly concern them to others.

No form of government lacks the potential for imperfection, corruption, and in general, a potential for public agitation with its methods, its errors and its leaders. The best the public can do is to intermittently modify the machinery to best meet the demands of the times.

Which is what the charter commission is attempting to do – to progress, not regress. The panel’s consultants also suggest that while looking at the composition options, commissioners might want to tackle the elusive problem that affects all governments – the dearth of public participation.

One of the reasons town meetings are disappearing as community populations increase is that they frequently fail to achieve a quorum, having to plead and cajole people to attend to what is essentially their purest form of doing business. However. lack of pubic participation is seemingly built into all systems of government.

The current Barnstable government gives citizens every opportunity to participate, by volunteering for one of the many boards that help keep the town machinery running, by attending council meetings and speaking up for three minutes or so, by confronting the town manager or any of his department chiefs with a problem or suggestion, by blowing the whistle on any perceived shenanigans, by conferring with town councilors, and by generally showing some interest in what is going on, why your tax bills are as high or as low as they are, why this road repair and not that one, why certain local bylaws are needed or not needed – such as prohibiting the smoking of cigarettes on the beach.

All these outlets were available in the town meeting form of government and remain accessible today and will be available, short of a commission recommendation for a dictatorship, regardless of the panel’s democratic proposal and the public’s vote on it.

In a fast-moving world, a majority of voters and taxpayers have opted to hire people to do the work for them, saying goodbye to the town meeting. They pay the politicians and the bureaucrats and they expect them to perform as best they can, in good spirit and diplomatic demeanor, for the good of the community. Thus, most people (the employers) feel there is little need for them to actively participate, as they do not help mowing the lawn when they hire a landscaper to do it, but exercise a modicum at least of direct oversight.

In this town’s current form of government, that’s not the case. The chief administrative officer, the town manager, is hired by the city council, thus only indirectly employed by the voter and buffered by the town council from direct, meaningful oversight and power of the ballot box.

From this corner, that’s the issue of the current commission’s charge: Should the town’s chief executive officer be a hired hand or an elected official directly answerable to the voters at large.